Gyrator PCB board updated (Rev06)

After some further testing and prototyping, I’ve updated the gyrator board PCB to provide additional protection to the lower FET device with:

Protection Zener (D3) between drain and source (through-hole)
Back to back protection Zeners (D1 and D2) between gate and source to ensure positive gate bias for higher currents on jFETs and use of enhancement MOSFET

Layout was carefully adapted to ensure track separation due to HV in place. Result is that the new gyrator board provides all protection needed on the lower device and simplifies the build process

Here is an example of a completed board tested:

01a Preamp Gen2: Build Complete

Yesterday I started with the build of a new 01a preamp Gen2. I made some component changes during the build process thanks to Andy Evans who reminded me of the Russian FT-2 teflon capacitors. I had a pair left of 220nF FT-3 caps in stock!

The circuit is the same as the original preamp but with some component changes:

C1 is 100nF/630V ClarityCap polypropylene
MOSFET is DN2540 and jFET is BF862
Rmu is 330Ω Kiwame
Filament resistors are NOS Russian wirewound 51Ω/20W. I use a pair of them in parallel. Bias is about 5V.
Filament bias using Rod Coleman v7 regulators. Set starved to 200mA
The output caps are Russian NOS teflon FT-3 220nF / 600V. You can use a pair of FT-2 100nF alternatively.

The bias point is changed slightly up to 5V so the anode voltage is increased to 115V to get the 3mA of anode current. This time I’m using the BF862 which can be soldered in the gyrator PCB instead of the 2SK170. I preferred the sound and higher bandwidth as well as lower output impedance. The BF862 is a real winner as lower FET.

Here is a view of the preamp inside:

The heavy FT-3 caps are mounted on top of the gyrator PCB boards. The top anodised plate is 4mm thick and anodised. The teflon UX-4 sockets from Luciano Bandozzi (Jakeband) are mounted with silent blocks and Rod’s regulators are bolted to the top plate. you don’t have to as they dissipate very little power in this case.

How does it sound? Well, just played it for a couple of hours and I’m amazed with the subtle differences that the Russian wirewound resistors and output cap + BF862 can bring to this preamp. We did some listening tests recently with Andy Evans comparing filament resistors and these ones were real winners for both of us.

I hope it improves with time after breaks in a bit more.

DHT preamp “The Mule”

The birth of the Mule

The name I guess says it all. This is yet another DHT preamp with the gyrator PCB. So what’s different? Simply, a breadboard DHT preamp module ready to be abused. I’m planning to mod this to death and try a long list of other DHTs with the gyrator load.

I will only need to change the valve sockets (or build an adaptor) as well as the filament resistors and Rod Coleman filament regulators. Simple changes which can be done fast, will open the door to quick tests on my system.

In order to make this simple and a rapid build, I opted to use an IKEA chopping board. These are made of a laminated hardwood and are dirt cheap. A couple of hours are required to drill all the board like this:

Job done. You only need to do this once. Here is another look at the half-build Mule:

The initial sockets are NOS short pin UX-4/UV-4. I will play around with the 01a before I move to other DHTs. I still need to add the tag strips for filament resistors, output capacitors and the filament regulators.

Wiring will take a couple of hours and we should have another DHT amp to play with 🙂

4P1L: pump up the current!

Background

I’m a firm believer than sharing knowledge and experience is the best way forward to continue learning yourself. It always pay pack at some point. This time Paul Prinz, a fellow implementer of the 3B7 DHT Preamp using the gyrator PCB, came back with a great suggestion. He found a MOSFET which could do high drain currents, it has high transconductance and most importantly the parasitic capacitances were low even close to the BF862. Hooray, I thought. We may have a great solution here to use the gyrator load for currents above 25mA and with similar performance to the great BF862. There are some other depletion MOSFETs that can do high currents, however they all have relatively high capacitances and low transconductances when VDS is low, like in the cascoded gyrator circuit.

The BSH111BK is an enhancement MOSFET, so doesn’t have a “depletion” behaviour like the jFETs. This isn’t a problem as the bias voltage can be set by the reference CCS.

For comparison, here is a brief summary of the key characteristics of these three devices:

	BF862	BSH111BK	MMBFJ310L
Ptot (W)	0.3	0.3	0.225
VDSmax (V)	20	55	25
VGS off (V)	-1.2		-4
IDSS (mA)	25	210	60
Gfs (mS)	45	640	18
Ciss (pF)	10	19.1	5
Crss (pF)	1.9	1.5	2.5
Coss (pF)		2.7

Continue reading “4P1L: pump up the current!”

CX-301a DHT Pre-amp Build from Malaysia

A fantastic build of the 01a preamp using the gyrator PCB from Cheah:

I have just completed my 01a preamp with STP3NK60ZFP output follower. The preamp sounded great !!

A great looking preamp using Rod Coleman’s regulators, output follower and V-Cap capacitors. The jFET is BF862.

Well done Cheah!

Tony’s 01a Preamp

I went to see my friend Tony today and helped him to fix his 01a preamp implementation. Time ago Tony used a prototype version of my gyrator PCB to build the Gen2 preamp with the addition of an output follower to address the slew rate limitations he had on his system due to the larger capacitive load.

Luckily we found the fault easily and it was a bad solder in one of the smoothing HT chokes. Once fault was rectified, we proceeded to take some measurements of this preamp.

Continue reading “Tony’s 01a Preamp”

Filament Bias: a practical example with 3A5 DHT

Introduction

Recently I was asked about whether I could write on my blog about how to design a filament bias stage. My immediate answer was:

I don’t have much time these days am afraid to write extensive articles (and sometimes to even write-up at all)
Thomas Mayer has written about it (see here). Of course, I completely forgot that Thomas never completed his intended series of posts around filament bias, so I decided to attempt explaining the practical aspects of its design in this blog.

Before you continue reading this post, I suggest you read first Thomas’ article above and get yourself acquainted with DHTs and triode amplification. I’m not going to cover any of that theory which I will give it for granted that the reader is experienced with valve circuits and in particular with the hybrid mu-follower amplification stage with gyrator load.

3A5 DHT example

Continue reading “Filament Bias: a practical example with 3A5 DHT”

Gyrator Test Mule: 4P1L Preamp

It’s always great to come back and revisit a great design. The 4P1L preamp performs flawlessly so I tweaked the gyrator board to see how it worked with the BF862 FET. The result is great, it sounds as good as it measures:

The 4P1L is biased to 150V/25mA which is the maximum current that the BF862 can do (IDSS max). You can see that the frequency response is flat up to 1.5MHz. The LF response of my test mule is affected by the AC coupling of the measuring gear. However it should be around 5-10Hz.

The distortion of low-level signals is really good:

Predominantly H2, it’s very nice to see THD<0.015% for a 4Vrms output. The load is 100KΩ which is the typical input impedance of an amplifier (with exception of solid state gear)

This low distortion manifests across the entire audio band (ignore the THD below 20Hz which is a byproduct of my testing gear):

The nice thing to see also, it’s how well the 4P1L can drive larger voltage swings:

We can see H4 popping up, however odd harmonics are lower (H5 in fact is higher than H3). THD at 10Vrms is still below 0.03%!

27 Preamp

An IHT preamp, oh yes!

I always loved the 27 valve. It was one of the first line stages I built many years ago before adventuring in the DHT world. I still have a large collection of them and I was very fond of the mesh anode ones. Please check Thomas’ blog in which he wrote a very nice note about it.

With the hybrid mu-follower (a.ka. gyrator) configuration, we can build a minimalistic and great preamp stage. The 27 has a mu of 9, so in some scenarios this may be a bit too much gain, but for many cases, it’s just what we need to drive the valve amps. Someone recently asked me for help on this, so here it goes my version:

The circuit is dead simple. The 27 is biased with a battery via a grid leak resistor (R1). C1 blocks DC from input and contributes to LF response by forming a pole with R1. 150nF is good enough but if you don’t have any, use 220nF. The operating point is 6mA looking at my old notebook. The supply doesn’t need any funky regulation, and 180-200V should do. The top FET should be either DN2540 or any other depletion of your choice. The lower JFET should be either a 2SK170GR or 2SK170BL (preferably). You can use a J310 here as well (or SMD BF862).

The sound is beautiful and THD is very low driven by H2 only, as you would expect from this triode.

If you don’t want battery bias, you can add a 1K5 resistor in the cathode with its decoupling cap and remove the battery and C1. R1 should be changed to 47k then.

Hope you enjoy this!

Ale

Russian PSE in Steroids (01a into 4P1L) – Part IV

More power

Our previous west meets east circuit can be improve further. In fact, a compromise made with the filament bias design is that coupling between driver (FET follower) and the output stage wasn’t DC. We want DC coupling to get best performance, to ensure we can drive well the output stage and provide sufficient grid current even when not operating in A2. This can be done with filament bias, however, since we are already introducing a negative supply, I’d prefer removing the filament bias and go for proper grid bias to get best performance of output stage in terms of maximum power and linearity.

The below circuit can be easily implemented with just few modifications from previous version:

What has changed here? Not much, the coupling cap C2 is now between the gyrator and the FET follower. The gate bias resistor R6 provides high impedance to the gyrator load to ensure maximum performance of the 01a driver (minimum distortion given size of load). Not as good as previous version, but good enough. The R6 is connected to a potentiometer which sets the bias voltage. The bias voltage is derived from V2, the -50V negative supply. You can see that this circuit will put more stress into the M1 FET as now there is an additional 25V of drop across it so power burned on this device increases.

The output of the follower is directly coupled (DC) to the output stage. The filament bias resistors are removed and we use the Coleman regulators directly on the filaments of the 4P1L.

This amplifier responds better to the grid current of the output stage once the output power goes over 3.5W. At 4.5W the distortion is just above 3% (3.2%) with a 3Vpp input signal. A tad more and you can get to the 5W and a bit more into A2 operation.